After the Cabaret (33 page)

‘Oh,' said Katherine. ‘You must stay to lunch.'

‘Yeah – we can pull crackers and put on paper hats,' he said. ‘Tell me this, Katherine, if I hadn't got in touch with you, once you heard what I was doing, would you have got in touch with me?'

‘It was just a coincidence,' she said.

‘Fuck you,' he said.

The rest of the journey passed in silence.

Back at Chapel Manor Farm he parked. They all got
out of the car and Greg went upstairs to fetch his bag. As he closed the front door he heard the phone ring. Katherine and Simon, together in the drawing room, did not come out to say goodbye.

After Greg's call from Dorset Bruno sat down again and continued to speak into his tape-recorder.

‘Claudia began to live in Sally's house. Antonia and Ricardo spent a lot of time there, helping. I would go when I could, for it was only by chance that I had avoided the fate of Claudia and Simon Stein. Of Simon there was still no news.

‘It was terrible,' Bruno said. ‘It was quite terrible. Claudia's state of mind was not good. When you think what had happened to her, what she had seen, what she had endured, that was not surprising. She was like a zombie, clear about only one or two things, one being that her daughter must not see her until she looked more like a mother – anyone – should. The other, that her husband was dead.

‘So I would go there and help, cleaning, that sort of thing. Sally was hopeless at it. In any case, the house was unmanageable. Sometimes I'd cook some German
food and Claudia and I would talk. It was easier for her to use German, though difficult for her to speak at all sometimes. Sometimes she would pause, look ahead of her into space and tears would begin to run down her face. This was difficult for me,' Bruno said. ‘I'm not good at such things. She was so broken, so weak. There would be these long silences, where you could almost feel the nightmares building in her head. And at other times she would speak fluently, but of times and people I did not know – of her childhood, of films she had seen before the war, but never about Dachau. It chilled me. It frightened me. Many times I did not want to be there. Sometimes I would arrange to go and visit her then cancel at the last moment. I am ashamed of this, but I am a selfish man. I can only take so much.

‘But you must have the whole story. Well, then,' said Bruno. At this point he got up and poured himself a brandy. He sipped a little and went on speaking. ‘The Steins met at the Berlin Institute of Technology before the war. They were both top of their classes, sometimes Simon in position one and Claudia second, sometimes the other way about. But, of course, Simon was a Jew. Claudia was not. They married in nineteen thirty-six, the year Hitler made it illegal for Jews to marry Gentiles, but Claudia and Simon did it anyway. They had to keep the marriage a secret.

‘By this time Simon could not get the work he was qualified to do, because of his race. But Claudia was taken on by Walter Dornburger at the experimental rocket station at Kummersdorf-West, not too far from
Berlin. I don't know if you appreciate fully what this is all about, Greg. I think you will know the name of Claudia's superior, though. He was Werner von Braun. So there was Claudia in the Army Weapons Department, involved in developing rocket technology, while Simon worked as a hospital orderly, which was all he could get. The country was becoming a hell for Jews. And they were living apart, at two different addresses, pretending not to be married.

‘Of course, they should have left but they couldn't see into the future, could they? Clever as they were, they couldn't know …

‘Later, around nineteen thirty-eight, Sally returned to Germany and tried to take up again with Christian von Torgau, to discover that this once enlightened and civilised man, free-thinking and cultured, had become a fanatic. How such a thing can happen I don't know. It's possible to understand the poor and deprived adopting a philosophy that promises them power and wealth and tells them they have a natural superiority over another group of people, so they can treat others as they themselves have been treated – but a von Torgau? A man with almost everything? What did he want? A faith? More power when Hitler had conquered the world? I don't know – some things you can never know.

‘His wife Julia was not with him in this. Julia's family was even older than von Torgau's. She was more aristocratic, even, than he. She was a cold woman, haughty, and I don't know what their marriage was like. It was suitable, though, and two sons were born, which, I suppose, was the
point of it. Julia disliked Sally, but not because she was von Torgau's mistress – I expect the marriage was by that time beyond love, jealousy, all the rest. No, I think she disliked Sally because Sally was Sally, disorderly and English, and she didn't know the rules. I suppose a woman like Julia would expect to be respected by her husband's mistress, as she might have been respected by anyone who was, in some way, in the family service. Which Sally didn't understand and didn't care about. However, when it came to the point, Julia couldn't believe in Hitler. She believed in her country, but not in Hitler. So there it was.

‘Now the von Torgaus and the Steins were friends, which you might think strange, but no, Simon Stein's father had been the von Torgaus' banker. The Steins were greatly cultured, something, perhaps, of more importance in Germany than in Britain. And Christian and Julia had a passion for music, as had Simon and Claudia. Julia was a good pianist. She had a natural talent. Simon was a fair violinist and Claudia played the cello. They would meet often, sometimes just for a meal or to talk, sometimes to play music, purely for the fun, because they loved it, a feeling which transcends class and race and politics. Musicians are musicians. You will remember I told you I was there one evening, before the Nazis put an end to everything good, including their music. Von Torgau's conversion ended their friendship also, but Julia maintained her loyalty to her friends and continued to see them.

‘By now Claudia was working on rocket fuels. This was crucial work, of course, for without light fuel the necessary
impetus could not be achieved for successful launching. The scientists weren't keen on the weapons side of the affair. It was the rockets themselves they were interested in. There was a lot of politics – for the first three years of the war Hitler, for example, was not convinced about the use of rockets in warfare. Just as well – if he'd become keen earlier he might have won the war. Never mind, it didn't happen.

‘Claudia got pregnant about the time Britain declared war, and went back to her parents to have a child few knew about. Fewer still knew the paternity of the child, not even Claudia's parents, who had to accept that their daughter had come home to bear an illegitimate child in secret.

‘The child was born. Claudia returned to Berlin with her and gave her to a woman in the house where she lived to bring up. She went back to her work.

‘Remember, the child was half Jewish, the marriage had been illegal. All three, Claudia, Simon and the baby, were in grave danger. Each year the punishment of the Jews grew worse. In the week of Claudia's return Simon was arrested. He had been picked up at the hospital where he worked and accused of theft. This was probably the action of a malicious fellow worker. It's certain he was innocent. But he was a Jew. He was condemned, he disappeared. It was Julia who made the enquiries – Claudia could not afford to be so involved. But even Julia got nowhere. As for finding Simon, he had disappeared, no one knew where. Claudia's position was impossible – her husband was missing, perhaps dead, her child, in Nazi Germany,
half Jewish, and then there was her work – poor woman, poor woman.

‘And so to Sally. I think she was what they called a stay-behind. There was a secret service organisation, called Department D, as it had been since the days of the Fenians at the end of the last century. Even before the war began they started persuading people to stay behind in Europe – most important, of course, were those prepared to remain in Germany. I think Pym, who was well placed in intelligence at the time and who had known Sally in Berlin, was responsible for persuading her to stay in Germany. And report back. I think Theo Fitzpatrick, who was also up to his neck in the secret world, was in it too. I think Pym was “running” Sally, as they put it. Imagine how furious he must have felt when she turned up in London with Claudia and Simon's baby instead of staying where she was sending information. The fact that remaining in Germany put her in a position of extreme danger wasn't likely to worry Pym. That's what I guess. It's not what I know.

‘Anyway, Julia von Torgau knocked on Sally's door one day and offered her money and the right papers to leave with the baby. Julia and Claudia knew that this was the last possible moment to get to safety. If Sally could go to France, which was still fighting, then she would be all right on her British passport, Julia thought. No one anticipated then how quickly the French Army would collapse.

‘And Sally agreed. She told me that in Germany she'd been getting more and more frightened. Julia's offer came at the right moment for her. Claudia, poor
woman, brought the baby one night and Sally left with Gisela.

‘As I say, Pym must have been furious when she turned up. He was a man who played chess using people as the pieces on the board. Sally's arrival must have seemed as if a rook had got up and strolled off.

‘Sally claimed that Gisela was hers and Pym at first believed her but then he found out who Gisela's parents were. He had another contact, a man in the same building in Berlin where Sally had lived. This man had seen a woman arrive with a baby the night Sally left. That led Pym to guess the baby wasn't Sally's but he would never have found out who the mother was if Claudia hadn't broken down and prevailed on Pym's contact to get a message to Sally to discover if she and the baby had arrived safely. Of course, the message fell into Pym's hands.

‘He was delighted. Now he had a woman at the Kummersdorf research institute, right at the heart of the experimental work on rockets. And he had the woman's child in Britain. So he could threaten Claudia with taking her baby from Sally if she did not send information through his contact. And he had Sally where he wanted her by telling her that if she put a foot wrong he would turn Claudia in. Whether he would or would not have done so, that is not the kind of bluff you call.

‘Blackmail – double blackmail – of two women and a helpless child. Pym must have thought his lucky day had come. And all the time he could feed a percentage of his information to the British Government and quite a lot to the Soviets, securing his position in both places.

‘He must have been happier still when he heard of von Torgau's appointment to the German general staff in Paris. Here was the chance for more blackmail. Sally had to go to von Torgau because Pym threatened that if she didn't he'd betray Claudia to the Germans. Von Torgau, Pym thought, would have to co-operate with Sally, to some extent, because if even a portion of the story between them came out he would have been ruined as a serving officer. All this was a triumph for Pym, there behind the scenes, pulling all the strings. What he didn't know was that it had been Julia von Torgau who'd organised the removal of the baby. He was furious when he found out.

‘Meanwhile, poor Claudia was providing information on all the work at Kummersdorf and of the internal politics behind it, the decisions, the funding and so forth, and also the location of the rocket launching station they had built on the Baltic coast. All this she did for three years. I don't know how she bore it. Then the entire project fell under the control of the SS and something went wrong. I don't know what it was, but Claudia was caught, tortured and thrown into Dachau.'

Bruno sighed and was silent for several minutes. Then he poured himself another brandy, sat down and spoke on.

‘You are amazed, aren't you? But there's more. Pym wanted Claudia to go to Russia – that was the point of the rescue from the camp. She was going to be a sort of present from Pym to the Soviet Union. She'd been working under von Braun for several years (and
the Americans already had
him,
for their rocket programme).

‘The race was on between the Soviets and the Americans. Pym had to help the Soviets – yes? They needed the rocket launchers to launch atomic weapons, just like the Americans. They wanted to get into space too. This was a race to control the world. And Claudia had been in Dachau for only a year. She could still be useful. She knew the direction of the research, the problems, some of the solutions – oh, yes. She could still be useful in Russia. Pym was playing for high stakes, eh, Greg? Now you see what kind of a man you spoke to in Moscow. Who Pym is. Why, old as he is, people are still frightened of him.'

‘But before Pym made his next move Claudia and Sally went to see Gisela. Sally said the visit started badly.

‘Sally and Claudia arrived, very tired from the journey, and walked up the drive to the front of Glebe House to find a large furniture van parked in front. The Cunninghams were moving in.

‘Betty was addressing one of the removal men in harsh tones as he brought a box from the van. “For God's sake, be careful what you're doing, man.” Gideon Cunningham was outside with Harry Jackson-Bowles, while the Cunninghams' two boys, Neville and Christopher, were chasing Gisela's cat across the lawn. It climbed an ornamental peach-tree, which they shook to and fro to dislodge the animal.

‘At that point Gisela was holding Miss Trotter's hand at the front door near Gideon and Harry, with an expression of intense confusion on her face.

‘Then up the drive came the two tired and shabby women – Sally and Claudia. By agreement Miss Trotter had told Gisela only that Sally was coming with another lady and the child had enquired no further, like the well
brought-up child she was. But she had plainly suspected all along that the other woman might be her mother. After all, Sally had said they were looking for her. Therefore, the moment she spotted the pair she broke free of Miss Trotter and rushed to Sally and Claudia. Claudia looked pitifully down at her daughter's bright little face and tears ran down her checks as she knelt, painfully, to be closer to the child. Gisela looked into that tear-stained, wasted face, shocked and half fearful. Claudia was not the happy, pretty mother a young child might have imagined. Yet, I suppose, when she looked into those eyes she saw a kind of love she hadn't known before, for she smiled at the woman, kneeling there, and said, ‘Are you my mother? Did Sally find you?' And Claudia just nodded and they embraced each other.